Earlier today, a German magazine reported that Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki said that he favored Barack Obama's plan to withdraw troops from Iraq in 16 months.
But later, an Iraqi aide to al-Maliki "clarified" the remark.
The statement by an aide to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki calling his remarks in Der Spiegel "misinterpreted and mistranslated" followed a call to the prime minister's office from U.S. government officials in Iraq.
Remember when Bush said he would withdraw troops if Iraqis asked him to do it? Now Bush is just playing blatant puppet master.
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2 comments:
When people start "clarifying" their remarks, it's a sure sign they're under pressure. It's like Phil Gramm not wanting to be a "distraction."
But it's obvious that what Maliki said to Der Spiegel was accurately quoted. By the way, Puppet Master in German is Puppenspieler. So Bush got Maliki to change his spiel, for the moment. There are other puppeteers at work now as Bush's aura fades.
Peter makes some very good points. Maliki is the creation of the occupation, but, as an Iraqi politician, he realizes that he has to adjust himself to U.S. politics and the likelihood of an Obama victory. At the same time, he has to keep Bush relatively happy to keep himself in one piece. We can expect this to continue as the campaign goes on and the Iraq occupation becomes a major issue in the campaign.
By the way, Peter's use of the term puppet got me to thinking. At the Paris Peace negotiations in 1972, the chief Vietnamese negotiator angered Henry Kissinger by calling the Saigon dictatorship "puppets." Kissinger then rattled off a series of instances in which the Saigon regime was at odds with the official U.S. position to argue that they were not puppets. The Vietnamese negotiator answered by saying that they were "bad puppets."
Maliki I think was being a "bad puppet" for Bush and may be a "bad puppet" again.
Norman Markowitz
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